function questions (Coming from coldfusion)

[downtroden]

As one of my first 'things' to build with ruby (to help me learn the language) I wanted to make a calendar. Now I'm a designer that is fairly comfortable with coldfusion, so the process for a webapp is completely foreign to me.

My question is whether or not some functions exist or something comparative to them.

DayAsString() - this takes an integer, 1-7 and outputs Sunday - Saturday
MonthAsString() - this takes an integer, 1-12 and outputs January - December
DaysInMonth() - Takes an integer, 1-12 and returns total number of days in the specified month

Are there any functions in this vein?

[samsm]

In Ruby you'd channel your time needs through a Time object.

time = Time.now
time.strftime("%A")
 
#go crazy if you want
def time.day_of_week
  self.strftime("%A")
end
 
#less crazy
def time_to_day_of_week(time_obj)
  time_obj.strftime("%A")
end
 
time.day_of_week

There's a full chart of these %keys.
http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Time.html#M000297

[downtroden]

What about the days in month, is there a simple way to get the days in a specified month?

[pjleonhardt]

indirectly:

Date.civil(year,month,-1).day

It takes (year,month,day)... here, -1 signifying "go to the last day of the month", then give me the number of day I'm on..

via: http://snippets.scottwalter.com/posts/show/211

[downtroden]

I like that snippets site, thanks for mentioning that... however, when I try to run that code

year = Time.now.year
month = Time.now.month
total_days = Date.civil(year,month,-1).date
puts total_days

I'm getting an "uninitialized constant Date (NameError)" error. Any idea why?

Sorry, Date is a rails function and not ruby. I don't like how the http://corelib.rubyonrails.org/ page has ruby 1.8.4 for the page title.

[7stud]

require 'date'
 
def day_as_string(day)
    arr = Date::DAYNAMES   #Date is defined in the standard library file date.rb
    return arr[day-1]
end
 
def month_as_string(month)
    arr = Date::MONTHNAMES
    return arr[month]
end
 
def days_in_month(month, year=2007)
    return Date.new(year, month, -1).day 
end
 
#output the days of the week corresponding to the numbers 1-7:
(1..7).each {|num| print day_as_string(num), " "}
puts
 
#output the month names and the number of days in each month
#corresponding to the numbers 1-12:
(1..12).each do |num| 
    puts "#{month_as_string(num)} (#{days_in_month(num)})"
end
 
--output:--
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 
January (31)
February (28)
March (31)
April (30)
May (31)
June (30)
July (31)
August (31)
September (30)
October (31)
November (30)
December (31)